by Windsor Mann, USATODAY

by Windsor Mann, USATODAY

If, when asked where you are from, you say "the world," you most likely are an obnoxious dunce, an astrophysicist, or a member of the Obama family.

Speaking in Dublin, Ireland, on Monday, Michelle Obama announced, "It is good to be home" (never mind that she grew up in Illinois). "You never forget home," she said, forgetting her home. "And what my girls are learning is that every day, their home gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It is no longer just the South Side of Chicago or Washington, D.C., but it is Moneygall. It is Dublin. It is the world."

On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Arizona law requiring voters to show proof of their citizenship. Many opponents of the law, I think it's fair to say, take as axiomatic the notion that it is somehow un-American to be (officially) American.

This notion is as old as America itself. The Declaration of Independence refers to "all men" as being endowed with certain unalienable rights. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, wanted America to serve as an "empire of liberty" that would "ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe." His friend and compatriot Thomas Paine declared, "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind."

Just three days before the first lady's remarks and the Supreme Court's decision, the new Superman film, Man of Steel, opened in theaters worldwide. According to the movie's official synopsis, a boy who "is not of this Earth" seeks "to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind." No longer does Superman stand for "truth, justice, and the American way." Now he stands for the idea that it takes an alien to save the global village, and that one needn't wave the Stars and Stripes to do so.

Coincidentally, Man of Steel opened on Flag Day, a holiday not widely celebrated among inhabitants of Krypton or those who call the world their home - i.e., cosmopolitans. The word comes from the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who proclaimed that he was a citizen not of any particular city but of the world. For cosmopolitans, the only worthwhile community is the international community.

Supreme Court justices have a habit of invoking "the world community." Before she retired, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that justices "will find [themselves] looking more frequently to the decisions of other constitutional courts" because globalization is creating "one world." Justice Stephen Breyer has surveyed Zimbabwean law to improve his understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called for "a spirit of humility" in American jurisprudence, or what Thomas Jefferson called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

Foreigners in their own country, cosmopolitans bask in cultural condescension. Several years ago Michael Moore told a British newspaper that Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." A less egregious example is John Kerry, who, when running for president in 2004, bragged that "foreign leaders" were rooting for him.

Today's cosmopolitan-in-chief is Barack Obama. "I believe in American exceptionalism," he said four years ago, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." This is patently absurd. When every country is exceptional, no country is exceptional. Similarly, when your home is everywhere, your home is nowhere in particular.

America's first family is homeless, and the world is to blame.

Windsor Mann is the editor of The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism.